Bone marrow registry now collects saliva, not blood from donors

The nonprofit bone marrow registry, set up by the old students of Bangalore Medical College (BMC) with the help of Infosys Foundation, has made the sample collection process from potential donors a two-minute affair. The registry no longer collects blood sample -just a bit of saliva will do.K R Balasubramanyam | ET Bureau | September 21, 2015, 14:56 IST

BENGALURU: The nonprofit bone marrow registry, set up by the old students of Bangalore Medical College (BMC) with the help of Infosys Foundation, has made the sample collection process from potential donors a two-minute affair. The registry no longer collects blood sample -just a bit of saliva will do.

Backed by thousands of BMC alumni worldwide, the BMC Development Trust is setting up a national bone marrow registry aimed at making available peripheral blood stem cells to patients suffering from diseases such as leukemia and thalassemia free of cost.The Infosys Foundation has announced a support of Rs 2.5 crore for this year. The registry aims to have a database of one-million-plus human leuko cyteantigen typed (HLA) will ing donors.

“Earlier, we were taking blood for HLA typing. Now, we make the donor spit into the preservative kept inside a small plastic tube. We then separate the DNA from the saliva sample and do the HLA typing,“ said Dr KM Srinivasa Gowda, Chairman of the BMC Development Trust.

Those who require bone marrow transplantation are about 1.25 lakh per year in India, of which only about 500 are getting the transplant because of the huge costs involved in getting the HLA typing done.

All that a patient will need to do is visit the registry and see if he or she can get the right match. Such patients, doctors say, often end up spending about Rs 10 lakh or more just on getting the HLA tests done on people willing to donate peripheral blood stem cells. Each such test costs about Rs 10,000.

CELL DONATION: Even cell donation has become much simpler, Dr Gowda said. A person contacted for cell donation on behalf of a patient will find the whole exercise akin to that of a blood donation. “Doctors give the donor one injection per day for five days which will help increase the stem cell production in the marrow.On the sixth day , he or she will donate the blood. The only difference here is the donor's blood passes through a machine called pharesis where the stem cells are separated and the blood flows back into the person's body ,“ he explained. The Development Trust started the campaign in April. “We now have about 4,500 members on the registry. Our aim is to reach 10,000 by December when we will dedicate our registry to the nation,“ said Dr HH Suresh, Secretary at the Trust.“We recently went to Mount Carmel College and collected 57 samples.We will be first visiting all degree and professional colle ges in Bengaluru to collect samples from willing donors,“ he added.

Alongside, the Trust is also set up establish a bone marrow transplantation unit at the Victoria Hospital at a budget of about Rs 1 crore. This will be a highly sensitive sterile unit meant for conducting the bone marrow transplants.

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